Conspicuous Consumption Counter Balanced with Art and Architecture

This morning was laundry time. After using the AEG Lavomat and the drying rack here at Dieffenbachstrasse 32, we were off for a journey to KaDeWe and environs. Oh my, this is shopping on steroids. Everything in this complex (yes, that entire building is KaDeWe) is presented in a fashion to delight at great expense, all seven floors. At least, I think there were seven. We did have coffee on the fifth as I recall. Mushrooms and tea were on my mind as items that we could use. Finding each of those, I became paralyzed with the conspicuous consumption in this retail cathedral. Shown below is part of one of the inner elevator areas.



So instead I purchased some Pu Erh Tuocha tea from a small shop in the trendy area near KaDeWe. That was after seeing some very interesting architecure - a sail - the Kant Dreieck building with the 36 m tower designed by Josef Paul Kleinhues, an armadillo - the Ludwig Erhard Haus (housing the Berlin Stock Exchange) designed by British architect Sir nicholas Grimshaw, and an object of abstraction next to the Judisches Gemeindehaus.









The Sail


















The Armadillo



















The Abstraction















The highlight of the day was the Kathe Kollwitz Museum that just happens to be next to the Literturhaus. Kathe Kollwitz (1867 -1945) was an amazing German painter and sculptor. The core of her work that most people are aware of deal with the suffering of people -- hunger, war, death. She died just a short time before the end of World War II, outliving her husband, her son Peter and one of her grandsons. Although much of her art deals with despair, death and tragedy her son Hans and others have commented on her love of laughter.
Poster from the Kathe Kollwitz Museum



















The Literturhaus Entrance
















Both arriving and leaving from the Wittenbergplatz UBahn station, we were able to enjoy the bells from the new tower of the Kaiser Wilhelm-Gedachtnis Kirche. This church is a famous Berlin momument being almost completely destroyed in the bombings of WW II. Two clock faces tell are at twelve. One seems to keep the correct time. The U1 train whisked us across Berlin in less than 15 minutes and with a quick connection on the U6 we were back climbing the stairs to our home in Berlin on the fifth floor of Dieffenbachstrasse 32.
Kaiser Wilhelm-Gedachtnis Kirche